PewDiePie and other YouTubers took money from Warner Bros. for positive game coverage (specifically Shadow of Mordor)

Link to article from The Verge

the FTC fined Warner Bros and told them "now don't do that again", even though the money they made from SoM and any subsuquent sequels will more than cover any fines they throw their way. Would love the Bomb and the Beast to discuss this issue for a few reasons: Shadow of Mordor won their game of the year in 2014, the underlying tension between the GB style of games journalism and the infamous YouTube "influencers", whether Pewdiepie could see a hit to his subscribers (highly doubt it), and if this could now make YouTube sensation Patrick Klepek the king of gaming on YT.

Good game got promoted, the horror.

It's more so the part where people got paid off to do it. The thing that angry gamers have been insisting journalists are guilty of for god knows how long now. In this case, it actually happened, but it's totally okay because it's just YouTube.

(Which is actually way worse, because it's fucking YouTube, and the reach that can have is immense.)

Really?

Is anyone really surprised that PewDiePie and others on youtube took money for positive reviews of any game? Shadow of Mordor was actually a great game, though, so for Warner Brothers to put up money they must not have been confident that it was going to do well. It's not like YouTube is some sacred place of non-corruption. People like money.

I'm also of a generation that really could care less what anyone on youtube is doing, so maybe I'm just salty?

Not surprising

Fixed.

What a shocker.

A bunch of youtubers took money and didn't disclose any of it? Consider me shocked. SHOCKED!

I don't really follow YouTuber's, so okay. That's stupid on both sides though. I just wanted to say that I didn't really enjoy that game. Fine music, fine graphics, decent take on unoriginal gameplay, but dull story, dull characters, dull setting, and the 'impressive' nemesis system was not-so-impressive to me. It is however one of those games that I'd probably go back to see if I enjoy it more, but I haven't really done that. I did just about everything in it when it came out, then went back one more time for about a 30 minute session and was done.

There might be no winning those people over though. Of course big publishers were going to throw money and perks at "Influencers" given they're easier to target than journalists "supposedly" brought up in a culture fixated on integrity and held to standards by their employers (typically, it's the publication suffering from issues rather than individual reviewers as we all saw with Gerstmann-gate). There is a certain kind of mental gymnastics people go through so they can more easily dismiss inconvenient opinions, and evidence to the contrary typically does little to dissuade them.

It's an issue on a mental/psychological level, and I'm not saying that to be derogatory. Read up on Mappers vs. Packers or The Programmer's Stone if you're actually into this type of stuff.

@sdoots said:

I know, right? I love that you could look back over the past 1-2 years alone and see damn near countless examples of Youtube channels and Twitch streamers being paid off or doing other shady shit, but yet there's still this very large vocal group of video game enthusiasts who won't stop shouting about how corrupt sites like IGN or Gamespot are, while at the same time proclaiming the "purity" of Youtube and/or Twitch.

Though not directly related, those Far Cry Primal ads on TV with the YouTubers were so embarrassing.

@depecheload: not a chance in hell. Why would they target anyone who isn't a minority or someone with progressive views? What do you think GG is, an ethics movement?

Between this and the undisclosed CS:GO betting sites, gaming information on Youtube is looking less trustworthy. Let's not forget that not only did PewDiePie and others not disclose that they took money to give positive reviews, but also that Warner Bros. didn't disclose that it paid Youtubers to do so. A bunch of shady shit on both sides. Tell us what you're doing at least!

It's still important to track. Even if most of us here at Giantbomb have grown up looking at traditional game sites for game coverage, knowing what's going on at Youtube is very important for the later millenials and Generation Z that rely on it for theirs, and by that extension for understanding the future of the industry. The sooner we get this shit right, the less problems we'll face in later years.

Not surprising. And reviews are more useless than ever.

I'm in my mid 20's and only go to GB, occasionally a IGN, Gamespot, Polygon and don't go to Youtube at all. I have never enjoyed stuff that I've seen there and wouldn't trust it in any impartial way.

I find people rally more around and put effort into video game journalism ethics than ethics in real journalism or politics or a number of things so I find it all a bit crazy.

and now that you can't trust reviews there is only one solution: buy every single game.

Those things are more often than not just commercials for the products than actual fair representation of them. This doesn't surprise me, nor does the lack of uproar about all of this.

i liked shadow of mordor but the fact that someone was paid money to give it a good review is unethical.

Wait, why did they think they needed to buy positive reviews when the game is great as it is?

Shouldn't be a shock to anyone who's followed game coverage prior to the rise of YouTube "personalities" and "influencers".

This is why I can hardly see how I could ever take YouTube/Twitch streamers seriously when it comes to promoting or 'just checking out' games (bar a few). The sad reality is that the aura of down-to-earth-ness and just being a one big family can inhibit critical thinking in the audience and doesn't demand professionalism of the streamers.

At some point it's on you. I mean YouTubbers never came off as particularly genuine to me. Ironically YouTube was all about sincerity and grassroots videos and now it's this weird platform to promote things and quite literally sell yourself for views. The weird tone of voice and cadence that all YouTubers share is actually unnerving in a way because on TV presenters are somewhat forced to adopt this happy go lucky persona because of the huge conglomerates they work for. YouTube personalities choose to adopt that same fake smile all on their own.

@whatshisface: People didn't think much of it before release. It was somewhat of a surprise hit. The game indeed got some serious paid promotion exposure, which is fine if it's disclosed (some of them did if I remember correctly at least on youtube, including Pewdiepie (unless he edited it in the description recently)).

@humanity Come on, be fair now. Don't generalize all YouTube content creators in that way. I'm sure you'd be rightly pissed if people generalized all "gamers" in the same way.

It's really important to have critical thinking / media awareness skills but the Youtube stuff is aimed at exploiting undiscerning kids a lot if the time. I guess we're fortunate to still have an FTC in the US at this point, maybe that CS casino case will go somewhere.

I don't care about Pewdiepie but are the other youtubers involved named anywhere? I'm at work right now so I can't spend a lot of time investigating.

This isn't even the reason I scoff whenever somebody brings up their favorite YouTuber.

Edit: Which I acknowledge isn't fair, and I know there are a few very talented people on there. It's overwhelmingly unbearable though.

Only disclosing it in the expanded description (not visible by default) isn't really good enough IMO. You should be upfront about these sort of things.

If this turns into a Gamergate discussion we are going to close the topic. We've been down that road and aren't interested in getting into it or having to deal with it again. Some posts about Gamergate and others that were bordering on personal attacks or were overly aggressive have been removed, let's try again.

@cav829: This phenomena is called cognitive dissonance, if I'm not mistaken.

Influencers got influenced

Why is Pewdiepie the only listed "influencer"? I would like to see a list somewhere of everyone who participated in this sponsorship deal, not just the most famous one.

Didn't we know this happened in 2014 and didn't PewDiePie admit to it (eventually) and all the other Tubers did too? This is just the judgment of the court.

Ethics are important in media in fact without them we cease to have new media, we just have snake oil and quackery. Disclosure is very crucial to having transparency with adverting, but I think many of the major players on the YouTuber side are far more careful now. We still shouldn't scoff at this because only vigilance will keep this from happening too often. As we saw wit teh CS:GO Betting Scandal, as major players in YouTube rise they go through a "morality" growing pains phase where the realities of actually being a business have to take hold. I think all business needed to be part of legal proceedings twice, once for something they did and once for not doing anything wrong It adds some perspective and backbone to the owners of said business to survive their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

I'm not sure why half the thread thinks "not surprising" is a novel thing to post, or how that even helps. I don't think the point was that this was a shocker, but that it's shitty someone who influences so many can just be paid off to give a good impression. For the record, "but Shadow of Mordor was a good game, so whatever" is not only a slippery slope to travel, but I'm in the minority in thinking that this game was just "okay", so it does seem shitty to me.

All that said, I do have two Youtube personalities I go to for game opinion, but Giant Bomb is still my number one. The idea being that a smaller set of favorite reviewers will decrease the chances of blindly following some "influencer" who I don't really even like. Like someone else said: trust who you trust and research everything else. Not much else to do.

@stordoff: Defo agreeing with that. Every one of those videos should start with the disclaimer.

It's also important to take into account that since 2014 (when this happened) a lot of lawsuits have come to pass resulting in both PR Companies and YouTube/Online Personalities have been put on direct pressure to disclose information of paid-for deals (or even just that the product was given to them for free). They also have to put in the video thumbnail, headline, or first few seconds of a video that it is an Ad such that a person would know that before being advertised to. Also notable, is that video creators are not covered by YouTube (even if YouTube tries to fight their battle - which for a few rare copyright cases they have) and can be disciplined directly by the FTC. Essentially, the transparency of the laws has been made clear to all sides now so making this sort of blatant miss-use of their position would be very strongly tackled today. Now, it wouldn't just be on the side of the big PR Company (who should know better - they already have to follow these rules with other online sites, magazines, TV, etc...) but also on the content creator's side to not accept these deals.

Essentially, before people could get away with this by feigning ignorance; now it would be an indefensible criminal offence. The only way a content creator would get out of it is if they argued they were directly manipulated by the PR company into following their malpractices. Similarly, a PR company can no longer hide behind the go to "it's on the content creator's side to make sure they follow all the rules of their country" phrase with which they use in TV and Film because people now know the dominant position these companies are in and forcibly expect them to be aware of the rules of the country-of-residence of the sponsored creator prior to making a contract. Failure to simply remind people to disclose the nature of the sponsorship in the video could, in some countries like the UK (where PewDiePie is), has been used as enough information fine a company before. And with the rise of multi-channel networks on the creators side (with entire teams set up to specialise in negotiating and finalising sponsorship deals) I'm sure we're just going to see rules being held even more strictly to YouTube channels.

I hope you have a licence to wield that edge.

@wacomole: In the vast sea of YouTube, intelligent and sincere people are more of an exception rather than the norm. I know a few really good channels but for each and every one of those there is at least 50 bad ones.

Also gamers have been generalized for ages and for the most part still are, so nothing new there.

This highlights a very real problem in that how do you educate an entire generation of people who don't understand the fundamentals of journalistic integrity. It's my biggest problem with Youtube presenters as a whole - how do I know X has put in the years and understands the business to know that taking something for "favorable" reviews is a bad thing?